The baffling thing is why this took so damn long. FF for Android supported add-ons from the beginning. That's the best thing about Firefox for Android! They decided to rewrite the UI in 2020, and there were fair reasons to do that. Obviously this required some reimplementation time for extension support.

But they then launched the rewrite of FF for Android with extension support... but hidden. Only a small set of recommended extensions were enabled, and a few were drip-fed over time (that is, added to the list). Thankfully, this included the single most important extension, uBlock Origin, from the very beginning. (The lack of uBO why Chrome for Android is borderline unusable for me!)

But from almost the very beginning, we've also had the ability to activate custom extension collections in Nightly (and in Fennec F-Droid, which is a rebuild of stable Firefox). The vast majority of extensions worked fine for... well, years now.

So why in the world was this delayed the whole time?

Proud of the team to have finally gotten to this point. Miss you all.

We should have listened to Hyatt back in 2003-ish when he basically said of XUL, "it's never gonna be great on *nix or Mac but it's good enough on Windows." Because of solid desktop horsepower growth over the 2000s, we were able to make XUL go for the three desktop platforms pretty well but it should never have gone to mobile and replacing it with a native front end was absolutely the right thing to do, despite the pain.

Lord knows there's enough money floating around that place.

What a shame - but thank you. Hopefully plugins come to Firefox for iOS some time.

I'm surprised it's baffling in a community of developers and other IT professionals.

It's not baffling to me that two significantly (wholly?) different applications on different platforms and form factors would require quite a bit of work to both be generally compatible with the same third-party software via the same API - and all while maintaining the same compatibility with another application, made by another company, completely outside Mozilla's control.

And it needs to work reliably enough to release to a world of developers - of every skill level, motivation, writing every kind of software (within the domain of browser add-ons) - with confidence that it will work for them and users.

And you need a way to maintain all that over the long term.

I'm impressed Mozilla!

If it was just an experience issue because like 5% failed weirdly or had bad performance but they couldn't validate them all: that's basically fine! Hide it behind an about:config flag! The AMO requirement was a privacy-invading piece of nonsense that had no business existing.

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/about

It was more complicated than that. Yes, GeckoView needed a separate WebExtension implementation, but that work was pretty much at parity with Fennec (the previous Firefox for Android that supported more extensions) when I left in 2021.

It was a product management decision that held off on more complete WebExtension parity with desktop, as well as any artificial limits as to which extensions were supported in release.

It seems to me projects like Iceraven demonstrated years ago that a great many extensions were usable without any changes. Why not just slap a "here there be dragons" warning on untested extensions and let users have at it?

To be clear, I'm not asking you to justify decisions you didn't make, just to provide some visibility into the process if you can. Mozilla was pretty opaque about it.

We essentially had that as part of pre-release builds. Same with about:config.

The argument we'd then hear from people is, "but I want the stable channel with the 'here be dragons'" stuff. The reality is, though, that the "here be dragons" stuff probably affects stability more than running beta does anyway; people who shat on us for that wanted to have their cake and eat it too, and it just doesn't work that way.

There is a much simpler potential explanation for such a product management decision. Suppose Mozilla determines that 90% (made-up number) of users want addons because they want uBlock Origin. It then seems sensible to prioritize that addon and not others when determining how to spend limited engineering resources. Reasonable people can of course disagree with that decision, but there's no need to bring conspiracies into it.

(NB: Even though I worked at Mozilla I have zero insight into this particular issue; it's entirely speculation.)

1. they wanted an Apple-level of verified review process for AMO, because the Chrome store and even Android app store have problems with malicious content.

2. This costs money.

3. They didn't want to open a free for all because they didn't know exactly how to go about solving 2. yet, and if they introduced some payment system then it would be easier to do from a clean slate, without an AMO full of existing extensions to somehow grandfather through.

As said before, this is fully unfounded and probably unfair speculation. I like it more than the 'google conspiracy against adblockers' though because Mozilla's motivations in this case are quite reasonable and can be taken in good faith. Keeping credit card skimmers out of AMO at the cost of restricting access to 'Firefox Pro'/'AMO Pro'/author-pays would honestly be quite a good thing for Mozilla to consider imo.

In any case it's great to see them allowing things now!

The Einkbro browser, optimised for e-ink devices (as the name suggests) is one. I believe Brave does as well.

As much as I'm a fan of Firefox (using it now on desktop), on my mobile e-ink device, Einkbro's optimisations make for a vastly superior browsing experience.

Firefox browser share is like 2-3%. Please consider using it, the internet will be a lot shittier without Firefox as an option, and it is the best option for privacy and ad-blocking.

While I definitely prefer FF and Android, I can support the notion of Mozilla integrating extension support into WebKit on their iOS version of FF. But it would take a lot of effort to do that, and Firefox for iOS is ultimately just totally separate from any other Firefox (whereas Android and Desktop Firefox share the same innards).

I guess they could take the approach of drawing the whole screen themselves but that’s going to make Gecko-based Firefox for iOS feel noticeably worse than the current WebKit/UIKit version in terms of responsiveness and such and might require some legwork to properly support VRR on 120hz iPhones (which is critical for battery life on those models).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_(web_browser)

At this point it's just a polite fiction, maintained jointly by Apple and app developers, that allows Apple to maintain a somewhat straight face when saying things like "you can't download third-party code at all" or "all code extending app functionality must be downloaded through our designated mechanism".

iSH is one such app, this blog post is very interesting: https://ish.app/blog/default-repository-update

Given the current regulatory scrutiny of their app store, I believe they just don't want to open yet another can of worms by rejecting "browsers" (which are really WebKit wrappers) for injecting third-party JavaScript into all web pages displayed within them, even though by their own rules, they arguably totally should.

Even if what you're saying is true, businesses that can't afford a ban from the App Store, can't afford to bend the rules. If Mozilla developed Firefox for iOS, with its engine, and Apple banned it from the App Store, the consequence would be millions of dollars going down the drain. And Mozilla would let their current users down, too, since the current Firefox for iOS is somewhat useful.

aShell [1] is very similar. It takes another approach – it compiles POSIX C source code to WASM and runs that using iOS's JIT-enabled web engine, which gives it much better performance than x86 software emulation. There's another one that uses lldb to interpret LLVM IR. In other words, if Apple doesn't want that type of app, they sure have been explicitly enabling the use case for a long time now.

> And the restrictions are mostly in place; otherwise, for example, there would be apps that allowed you to download torrents, or do other forbidden activities.

App store reviews don't exist to "prevent forbidden activities" in the legal sense; they are there to maintain their walled garden ecosystem financially, as well as protect their platform and products from reputational or legal harm.

The issue of legality and passing the App Store review process are largely orthogonal: Just like you can already do plenty of illegal things using stock iOS (e.g. writing threatening emails, downloading copyrighted material using WebTorrent etc.), you can do infinitely many legal things using Turing-complete computing as enabled by first and third party apps on iOS.

Now if you start offering an app that features a big button labeled "click here to dynamically load software facilitating copyright infringement", and Apple distributes it in their App Store after having reviewed it, that could get them into a tricky situation; offering a full-featured browser or OS emulator very likely doesn't, given that Google has been allowing these types of apps in their Play Store for more than a decade now.

[1] https://holzschu.github.io/a-Shell_iOS/

Back in the day, they were removing stuff like scripting apps. They sent warnings to the devs of Pythonista, forcing them to do things like [remove file-opening support](https://mygeekdaddy.net/2014/06/17/working-around-apple/). And they infamously removed iDOS (a DOSBOX port).

Now they're much more loose and allow things like iSH and so on. It is still a little bit of a gray area for arbitrary decisions by Apple, though.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/23994174/epic-google-trial-jury-ver...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38607424

https://9to5mac.com/2023/02/07/new-iphone-browsers/

But EU is pushing for sideloading

The problem is that many extensions have been incompatible with Android. And of those compatible, many have poor UX. For example, LeechBlock has been compatible and listed as available for some time, but its settings page isn't mobile-friendly. And LeechBlock can't restore settings from “sync storage”, you have to load them from a local file (on mobile, having local files is a challenge in itself). Many people may have a bad experience.

On the other hand, extensions are the primary reason to use Firefox on Android. Therefore, I'm glad about this news.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/hn-comments-owl/

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/rudolf-fernan...

This would enable proper isolation between browsing contexts, and therefore make progressive web apps truly usable and a good alternative to native apps. Currently PWAs leak cookies to the browser, therefore you cannot login on the PWA while browsing "anonymously" in the browser.

If Firefox goes back to being THE browser of choice for tech savvy people, I'll stop thinking I made a bad choice supporting it everyday since it came out.

Sometimes a joy.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/01/firefox-d...

Uhm, Kiwi browser is Chrome-based and supports Chrome-extensions on Android and has for years. It's pretty great.

https://github.com/kiwibrowser/src.next

Then again, Firefox could easily be said to not be a major Android browser either!

I don't pay consistent attention, but these are the version numbers I currently see:

Kiwi: 120.0.6099.26

Chrome: 120.0.6099.110

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/world...

It's a screenshot of today's old.reddit.com/r/all. You can see how you're able to read all of the text vertically, without having to scroll sideways, because it wraps perfectly to the current pinched zoom level. No other browser works this good on Android, and reading stuff is my main internet use case. Try seeing how that website looks on any other browser, it's ridiculous how unusable they are.

[1] https://files.catbox.moe/5t853c.png

For me, the most important add-on that has been removed from AMO is Bypass Paywalls Clean, which is the easiest way to bypass paywalls on popular news sites. In April of this year, a French website filed a DMCA copyright takedown notice, causing Mozilla to remove the extension from AMO.[3] The add-on developer (magnolia1234) did not want to challenge the DMCA notice, probably because it would require them to break anonymity and be subject to legal liability.[4]

Fortunately, in September, another developer (dbmiller) was willing to reupload the add-on to AMO as "Bypass Paywalls Clean (D)" with no changes.[5] The hope is that dbmiller will keep this add-on up to date with the source and challenge any DMCA notices filed against this new upload.

However, the fact remains that Bypass Paywalls Clean was unavailable on Firefox for Android for 5 months because the browser did not allow sideloading. In the announcement, Mozilla says their mission is to maintain "an open and accessible internet for all" and that extensions are meant to help users obtain "more personal agency out of their online experience". To achieve this mission and better distinguish Firefox from browsers that gate add-ons through app stores (Safari on iOS), Mozilla should allow users to enable sideloading on Firefox for Android as an option.

[1] Iceraven: https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser

[2] SmartCookieWeb-Preview: https://github.com/CookieJarApps/SmartCookieWeb-preview

[3] https://www.ghacks.net/2023/04/20/mozilla-removes-bypass-pay...

[4] https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...

[5] Bypass Paywalls Clean (D): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal...

Edit: Nightly gained the ability to sideload add-ons 2 weeks ago from the pull request at https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android/pull/4568. Also, a Mozilla employee has confirmed that sideloading is going to make it to the release channel of Firefox for Android!* Firefox is having an incredible month. It took time, but I'm extremely glad Mozilla is taking user feedback seriously.

* "We do want this feature in Release." https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android/pull/4568#...

I even tried creating my own collection to include Violentmonkey and it didn't work but I don't this second recall why

Before Bypass Paywalls Clean (D) existed, I was able to install Violentmonkey on Firefox for Android through the add-on collections workaround to use the Bypass Paywalls Clean userscript. You need to enable desktop mode when assembling the add-on collection (or do it from a computer) for Violentmonkey to show up as an option in the search.

uh-huh

> You need to enable desktop mode when assembling the add-on collection (or do it from a computer) for Violentmonkey to show up as an option in the search.

And people say "Firefox not popular, why?"

what a tire fire, for no damn good reason

I've been daily driving FF Android for a few years now and I've had the opposite experience: the vast majority of pages work and render fine (including HN) and it's an extremely rare occasion that I switch to Chrome to use a website. Even then, I often find that Chrome isn't any better and the underlying issue was the website's mobile handling in general (e.g. touch events working differently than mouse events, or just a completely broken mobile-only component swaps)

You seen this pattern again and again in Firefox news threads.

People b***h about Firefox's (lack of) market share, Mozilla doing stupid things (fair criticism), Firefox not having X (extension support on Mobile, moving from legacy extensions to standard manifest format)

Then people will still bring up this baggage even when something good happens, will refuse to move away from the browser monoculture/monopoly, s**t on Firefox devs

FFS, something good happened. No other browser has this. Yet people will find a way to lessen it. For what? What benefit?

We could downvote all that stuff to oblivion. Instead, comments like it are voted to the top comment on almost every page.

If that ever really meant something, it has been so overused in the last few years that it's impossible to pick out any needles of serious use from the general default trendy grain silos of despair.

I'm not trying to get all of humanity to give up sex. I believe we can do better, here on HN, in this one regard. I am that insanely optimistic!

Thank you for your work!

HN should have an annual Appreciation Day, with no enshittification of threads.

Sadly, the browser world has almost become something of a mono culture with the majority of offerings using Chromium as their base. I liked Opera for years. Original engine. Tabbed. Now Vivaldi is the Opera successor, but sadly uses Chromium as the base. Vivaldi have said they are not going to allow the changes to affect them.

Again, sadly, I doubt that in the near term, anyone will try and offer up a new browser. Even Edge is nothing more than Chromium with MS's tech-nasty Kabuki makeup and overly-complicated proprietary plumbing. Is it too much to ask for a browser that just browses the web without all the garbage tie-ins? Tabs, ad blocking that I control, not add-ins. Like a Pi-hole, where I can add lists. I realize some browsers do this, but the tie-ins, notes, skins, email, political activism, it's all too much.

Trolling used to be an amateur sport, but these days it's largely a professional endeavour. Astroturfing is an everyday occurrence on any decently-sized social media site, including this very one.

The nerd rage is targeted at Mozilla's dishonest and incompetent managers, no? The actual dev work is top notch.

Even if it is, that kind of language doesn't help. These are all people you're talking about, trying their best to do a job they care about. Nothing gets better by your being a jerk.

I would not take that as a given for Mozilla's upper management. Many of their decisions seem to ignore what users want in deference to Google or other motivations.

I would also note that "managers" runs quite a wide gamut and my experience with engineering managers at Mozilla was generally positive; upper management was not so great.

So, I'm glad they are expanding the extensions available. I just hope that this isn't tied to creating an account still. [EDIT] I was overjoyed to see that I was able to add an extension without creating an account. Yay!

This is one of the reasons it's so troubling when some techies latch onto some very closed platform (sometimes by a known-underhanded company) and start making it more attractive to others, by making open source software specific to it, making tutorials on hot employability topics that implicitly use the platform, etc. When open platforms exist, and could also benefit from this contribution and promotion.

At first it was "Jeebus, I wonder what's going on with that one person, who normally uses open source, stabbing themself in the back like that." Then it became "Jeebus, are we losing open platform ground with the majority of an entire generation of techies, after we'd finally won." (I have good guesses about why, and I also know at least a couple early maneuvers that I can't talk about, but it's still dismaying how vapid the collective behavior can be.)

Firefox's loss of market share in general is a direct consequence of its loss in market share among web developers, because web developers stopped testing their websites in Firefox.

Any time Firefox does something good for power users, it's a good thing for the whole web ecosystem.

I didn't say it was sh*t. I'm saying it's not newsworthy.

Clap for the devs. And install all the extensions. But we don't need a hundred posts about it. This isn't the big story Firefox marketing might think it is.

The fact news about Firefox gets upvoted clearly indicates it is newsworthy. You don't get to decide. The users of HN and their votes do.